Another member of our faculty, Salikoko Mufwene, has also been keeping a brisk pace with his scholarly activity of late. His recent publications range from several chapter contributions to new books on the evolution of language, language change and global Englishes to a co-authored peer-reviewed article on “Building social cognitive models of language change” (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13: 464-469).

Sali has also given several public lectures (in Montreal and the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association) and radio interviews on both Radio Canada International (on African contributions to creole language varieties and cultures) and BBC “Word of Mouth” (on creoles and media representation of nonstandard dialects).

Victor Friedmanhas kept himself busy after returning to Chicago last fall after a year in Eastern Europe. His recent activities include a paper on Macedonian dialectology and Balkan dialectology, as well as an article entitled “Turkish Infinitives in Balkan Romani” in the Encyclopedia of Sociolinguisticsof the World’s Languages (ed. Martin Ball, Routledge), coming out this year. In November and December, he traveled widely, from Salt Lake City to Boston to the University of Cyprus, speaking variously about Balkan dialects, language policy, and even the topic of violence in Balkan literature.

Between January and April 2010, he is scheduled to give papers at the LSA, UC Berkeley (Slavic linguistics), Melbourne (Macedonian and Balkan linguistics), Izmir (Balkan Music), and OSU (Seventeenth Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore), so watch for those.

Yaron McNabb has just had two articles based on research done with colleagues at Northwestern University published:

“Distinguishing the Said from the Implicated Using a Novel Experimental Paradigm” was published in Semantics and Pragmatics: From Experiment to Theory, and was written with Meredith Larson, Ryan Doran, Rachel Baker, Matthew Berends, Alex Djalali, and Gregory Ward.

“On the Non-Unified Nature of Scalar Implicature: An Empirical Investigation” was published in the International Review of Pragmaticsand was co-authored with Ryan Doran, Rachel E. Baker, Meredith Larson, and Gregory Ward.

The September 2009 issue of Language (Vol. 85, No. 3) contains a special section entitled “SIL and the disciplinary culture of linguistics,” comprising an important set of papers about the role of SIL’s linguistic work. Several of the contributors have connections to our department: Lise Dobrin and Ken Olson are PhDs from our department; Jeff Good earned his B.A. here; and Courtney Handman is a current joint Anthro/Ling PhD candidate.

Thanks to all for your contributions to this issue, and thanks to Amy Dahlstrom for bringing this involvement to our attention!